Unions helped Democrats win big in 2026. Now they want action

When Brody Rutledge wasn’t working 60-hour weeks or raising his four children this year, he was busy helping secure political victories for Democrats.

The 25-year-old was part of a group of Ohio union members who planned social-media blitzes in support of Amy Acton‘s campaign for governor and Sherrod Brown‘s effort to reclaim a Senate seat. On his lunch hour, during break times and after his kids went to sleep, the electrician created posts and videos to help raise the profiles of the two candidates among blue-collar voters.

The posts attracted more than 15,000 views.

Rutledge’s efforts paid off: Acton and Brown won their respective races, part of the blue wave that swept Democrats to power in Washington and in state houses across America — including in many states, like Ohio, that had been considered Republican-leaning, or reliably Republican.

“People are realizing that there needs to be a change,” Rutledge told CNBC. “We are extremely excited with the results.”

Rutledge was a part of what organized labor considered one of its biggest political efforts yet. Unions spent millions of dollars and mobilized thousands of members to get out the vote for Democrats in the midterm election. Now, they expect newly elected politicians to deliver.

Democrats, they say, need to get a handle on inflation, enact worker protections and deliver union jobs.

Historic mobilization

The AFL-CIO launched a seven-figure paid media campaign for the election and said its members since Labor Day had engaged with nearly 15 million voters. By the AFL-CIO’s count, more than 600 members of unions themselves were elected in the midterm, including dozens heading to Washington and hundreds who are bound for statehouses.

The CNBC Voter Poll shows midterm voters who were union members or lived in a union household went for Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 22 percentage points, the highest of the last four election cycles. That’s more than double the margin for the rest of the electorate: When looking at voters in non-union households, the gap shrunk to 10 percentage points.

“We are very proud of the impact that the labor movement made on this election,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of unions that represents almost 15 million workers. “It was our biggest and boldest effort ever.”

In some cases, unions got involved before party nominees had been decided.

In Michigan, the United Auto Workers organized behind Democrat Abdul El-Sayed ahead of what became a contentious primary race for U.S. Senate that he eventually won against Haley Stevens. The union believes that about one out of every 10 early voters in the August primary were UAW members.

“It was incredibly impactful,” Connor Farrell, a progressive fundraiser who worked with El-Sayed, said of the UAW’s endorsement. “I’m not sure we would have won without them.”